Having what you believe is an alien encounter is not necessarily a bad experience, with such an event prompting people to change their lives for the better, a conference has heard.

Almost 3,000 people who report having had an alien encounter have been surveyed about their experiences, with the initial findings presented at the Close Encounters Conference at Byron Bay on Sunday and Monday.

"What we're finding is that people are speaking about their experiences in an overwhelmingly positive way," she said.

"Their attitude to the materialistic world changes, they become more ecologically minded, they feel more empathy for the planet and themselves, and they are being changed in ways that many people can't understand."

Ms Rodwell said while she had not had an alien or UFO encounter herself, the stories of others had convinced her of life beyond Earth.

"The way they speak about their experiences, it changes you," she said.

"When you hear doctors, nurses, social workers, pilots, celebrities, lawyers, farmers, children, talking about this experience … when they're all talking about similar things and similar patterns and you hear the emotion and the feeling, all of that is an authenticity you cannot dismiss.

"This affects their lives and changes them, and that doesn't happen after a hallucination or a fantasy."

Not an event for sceptics

Conference organiser Kathryn Hand acknowledged the event was not designed for sceptics.

"We found that by organising this, people have started to feel more comfortable talking about it. We're giving them a platform to talk about it," she said.

"People are scared that if they start talking about it too openly other people might think they're crazy.

"We're bringing people together who have had encounters, and trying to make it something that can be discussed in an environment where they won't be ridiculed and where they can discover they're not alone."